Monday, May 02, 2016

Sunday Morning Comin' Down

The Gormless Wretches Edition.

The lowing herd of criminals and con men who operate our media frisked nervously around their paddock this weekend, biting and kicking each other and not knowing which way to stampede as the sweaty surrealism and queasy thrill of a holy shit, honest-to-God Trump nomination began to settle in.

Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.

-- using the very same words which once got Liberal bloggers permanently exiled from the polite company of Very Serious People like vinegar-fart-in-a-toupee, George Will (from the late Steve Gilliard back in 2003):

...
The problem, as I mentioned yesterday, is that our enemy is changing. It's no longer the bored kids and fundamentalists. It's about to be the Iraqi Army. Not the Quisling one we're training, but the old one, filled with veterans. They didn't want to fight, but they expect to be paid for their service to their country. And we're not paying them. We think of them as rank incompetents. Well, the real rank incompetents have been doing a pretty good job as the soldiers tried to feed their kids. Someone taught them to make boimbs and lay ambushes. I've been convinced that some of the young sergeants and junior officers never surrendered. They dropped their uniforms, went home and started killing Americans with their boys. Now, they're going to be joined by the pros, who realize that after getting rid of Saddam, who they hated , the Americans treat them like beggers.

You don't tell a long serving officer or NCO to beg for money and deny them their dignity. When we look back at this folly, the decision to fire the Iraqi Army will be seen as the day we lost Iraq.

And speaking of George Bush's Iraqi Clusterfuck, lemme tell ya, I can never get enough of the Mustache of Understanding sounding off about The Subject About Which He Should Have His Pie Hole Duct-Taped Shut Forever (from "Meet the Press"):

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: But in a way, they're a phenomenon we've seen before, which is that Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq simply cannot live together. And that's why we keep winning the war-- the Iraq invasion, we win the war, we lose the peace.

But the real reason Mr. Friedman was offered a place at Shuck Todd's Both Siderist Tent Revival Meeting, appears to be that they just needed some reliably fatuous boob to tee up this weeks pre-programmed hand-wringing about how awful it is that Both Sides yadda yadda starring Shuck Todd and Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier.

CHUCK TODD: You know, Ron and Tom, I thought of both of you this morning when I saw Boehner and Obama laughing it up. And all of a sudden I'm thinking, "That's great." And I'm thinking, "Wait a minute. Where was that when America needed it?"

RON FOURNIER: Yeah.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: You know, it's really true, Chuck. I think that everyone's trying to figure out the Trump thing. What's behind this? And I wouldn't pretend to know, and it's obviously a mix of things. But I think one of the things that's deeply behind it is the mood in the country for the last eight, ten years has been where the children of permanently divorcing parents. And I think that there's been this sense, these two parties, and it's like we're in a house with two permanently-- and even just a little clip like that, says you, "What if these guys actually had worked together like that?"

CHUCK TODD: I don't know if I've heard anybody put it any better than that. That's an interesting way of putting it because that is. It was like, "Oh my God, Mom and Dad. You guys had this moment. Where was this five years ago?"

Golly, Chuck, I can tell you exactly where this was five years ago. You and your colleagues in the media let the entire unhinged, Bush-loving Republican base slip away in the night, change costumes and immediately reappear in public life as the Fake Tea Party, no questions. Aided and abetted by you and your colleagues, this Fake Tea Party elected the worst, most pig-ignorant, most destructive bunch of howling Republican yahoos and open seditionists in modern memory. The Fake Tea Party then elevated John Boehner to Speaker while promising to have him drawn and quartered on the National Mall if he so much as he cooperated one iota with the Kenyan Usurper on renaming a single fucking post office.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, faced with a constant conservative rebellion, announced Friday he will step down at the end of October, a move that shocked Capitol Hill and exposed the deep tensions within the Republican Party over how to use its congressional majority.

Boehner’s nearly five-year hold on the speaker’s gavel had grown increasingly unsteady amid threats from more than 30 Republicans that they would force a no-confidence vote in his speaker’s position, which would have forced him to rely on Democratic votes in order to remain in charge.

In fact, Shuck, you might remember what a big deal it was that the Party of Limbaugh had gotten so reckless and ungovernable that, for awhile, it looked like no one in their right mind would be damn fool enough to take on the job of "leading". Big 'ol slab of dumb, Kevin McCarthy, tried to step up, but being very, very stupid, he forgot that he was on teevee when he played all of his Benghaaaazi Commitee conspiracy cards face-up and admitted that the entire thing had been a witch-hunt specifically rigged up to drive down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers:

See? It's really not that fucking hard to remember how we got to where we are, unless, of course, you are being paid not to remember. Like you are, Chuck. Like Ron Fournier is. Which is only approved and obedient go-along-to-get-along members of the Beltway are ever within shouting distance of circle jerks like this:

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CHUCK TODD: We all wondered, what if they golfed together all the time?

KRISTEN WELKER: Right.

CHUCK TODD: What if they did share a smoke, when the president was smoking? What would their relationship be?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: They started drinking at 10:00 in the morning.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: To be a fly on the wall for that video I would have--

CHUCK TODD: Just the taping.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Exactly.

But here's the funny part. We out here in flyover country who watch in bemused horror as these professional hustlers, hoaxers and humbuggers make a mockery of honest journalism often play a little game of "Stupid or Liar" without ourselves to try suss out the reason why they just keep telling the same transparently ridiculous lies over and over again. Are clowns like Todd and Fournier so fucking obtuse and cut off from the rest of the world that they're actually unaware of how ludicrous they sound to the average thinking man or woman outside of their cloistered little pocket Universe?

Nope.

It turns out that they are quite aware of what we think of them. But, as should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, all incoming criticism of the shitty job they do as "journalists" is simply pulverized in the same Both Siderist wood-chipper into which every other fact which inconveniently contradicts their bullshit Beltway narrative is fed:

RON FOURNIER: But that kind of comment gets mocked on the partisans on both sides.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I know it does.

CHUCK TODD: Oh, we're going to get mocked right now. "Oh, there you go. Fournier, Todd, Friedman, all you guys."

RON FOURNIER: But the fact of the matter, that's what leaders do is you set an example and you set a tone. The idea of two leaders showing that you can be friendly rivals, that's a good model for the rest of the country.

CHUCK TODD: And at the beginning of the relationship--

RON FOURNIER: That's when it should--

CHUCK TODD: --in December of 2010.

RON FOURNIER: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And again, and again, and again, and again.

Which is why, however weird and uncomfortable life may get inside the Beltway paddock (and however much they run off at the mouth about what "real Americans" think) none of these "journalists" would dare to wander out into the real world and risk accidentally sharing a microphone with anyone who might monkey-wrench their bullshit Bot Siderist fairy tales.

7 comments:

More examples of self-reinforcing delusion. Fueled by paychecks, served up to the rest of us in the interests of the oligarchy. Not a dimple of larger awareness appears on the placid millpond surface to wrinkle their delusion, nor will it, as long as the above-mentioned fueling keeps taking place.

I never watch Sunday morning shit, at least not since Bill Moyer retired. The text of that conversation between Todd, Fournier, and Friedman is enough to make me vomit. It is lifted right out of a Tom Tomorrow cartoon script. Howard Beale, where are you when we need you?

1. F*ck, this is long. Not as annoying as Mr. Rensin's column, though, since that felt more like one of those repetitive, "10 hours of the Town Theme from King's Quest" videos that sadists upload to Youtube. Mr. Sullivan, to his credit, is the better writer.

2. "For the white working class, having had their morals roundly mocked," Out of curiosity, which morals are those? And I could swear Mr. Rensin made the same argument.

3. "Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom rung of the culture as well." Out of curiosity, is there a REASON they're seen as this? Or are we liberals just calling people "bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes" out of nowhere?

4. Mr. Trump's enablers in the media never seem to be mentioned by Mr. Sullivan, as if Mr. Trump's unstoppable because he's unstoppable, not because Satan's Colonoscopy pulls in strong with the 18-35 demographic.

5. "And so after demonizing most undocumented Mexican immigrants, he then vowed to round up and deport all 11 million of them by force. 'They have to go' was the typically blunt phrase he used — and somehow people didn’t immediately recognize the monstrous historical echoes." Note to self: liberals aren't people. Doesn't matter if we recognized this.

6. "More to the point, those Republicans desperately trying to use the long-standing rules of their own nominating process to thwart this monster deserve our passionate support, not our disdain. This is not the moment to remind them that they partly brought this on themselves. This is a moment to offer solidarity, especially as the odds are increasingly stacked against them." Is it EVER the moment to remind them that they brought this on themselves?

"Journalists", like circus animals, know what cues to respond to in order to get the treat. Want the big paycheck? Play the part.What, of course, gives the game away is that the "liberal media" never has any liberals involved in it. Funny that.

This sort of behavior makes me think of a bunch of Colonel Blimps sitting around their London club pre-WWII reassuring each other that the British Empire would never go into decline. America will be "center right" and "both sides" will do it until it can no longer be denied that America is not and that the lunatics are conveniently grouped all on one side. Reality has very sharp teeth when it finally bites.

There's an interesting article that says the Sanders-Trump phenomenon is not some one-off oddity, but symptomatic of an oligarchy on the verge of collapse. http://evonomics.com/trump-sanders-phenomenon-is-a-sign-of-oligarchy/Cyclically, we're probably due for a shakeup, which may be why the last couple of years have had a distinctly unsettled feel about them.

I was enjoying Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier's hiatus from the green room and punditry circuit to promote his book about his son's autism (which, good on him, seriously). But it appears his mental capacity remains as diminished as ever, despite some distance from the Both Sides Bubble he was so happily ensconced in. His ability to completely ignore context and exhibit total lack of self-awareness continues unabated.

It's no secret that Boner and Obama get along fine and would have probably had a reasonably productive relationship if Boner wasn't constantly getting knifed in the back by Cantor, Paul "Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver" Ryan, and especially the FREEDUMB CARCASS. But, sure, the only obstacle to deals getting done was Obama's failure to "set a tone."

What a fucking clown. I didn't miss saying that about Fournier. He should have kept promoting his valuable book longer, taken a longer break from his Both Siderist rut. Might have done him some good.

What the eff is up with Doris Kearns Goodwin? Is she Besties with Dame Nooners or something? Tippling at 10 am and then projecting it onto Obama?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: You know, it's really true, Chuck. I think that everyone's trying to figure out the Trump thing. What's behind this? And I wouldn't pretend to know...but I really DO KNOW WHY, but I'll make sh*t up about how it's all the fault of both sides and the DFHs and Obama, so we'll all feel smug and can go home to our wonderful Acela bubble paychecks and cocktail parties and ignore the plight of the smelly proles. So there!

"What if these guys actually had worked together like that?" - ah, there it is: a good old steaming stinking DUMP Unit from the Friedstir. Saw it coming.